Transfer of contacts to SIM-map in Xiaomi smartphones

Changing a mobile device is often stressful, especially when it comes to losing sensitive data. One of the most reliable, albeit somewhat archaic ways to save a phone book is to copy the records directly to the phone. SIM-Owners of Xiaomi, Redmi and Poco smartphones running the shell MIUI HyperOS, or HyperOS, may encounter interface nuances that hide the desired features from the eyes of the average user.

Using a SIM card as a store of value ensures that your numbers stay with you even if your smartphone is completely broken or you accidentally reset your settings to factory settings, a kind of “digital insurance” that doesn’t require an internet connection or a Google account, which is especially true in the face of limited access to cloud services, but it’s worth remembering that this method has its own technical limitations on the number of characters and the format of data.

In this article, we will discuss the process of transfer in detail, consider possible errors and suggest how to properly prepare the phone book for migration. You will learn not only to save numbers, but also to correctly manage them using standard Android tools on devices of the Chinese manufacturer.

Preparation of the telephone book for transfer

Before you start copying directly, you have to audit the records you have. SIM-The card has very limited storage capacity compared to the internal memory of a smartphone or a cloud account, and the old storage format dictates its own strict rules, ignoring which will lead to the cropping of names or the loss of some numbers.

The GSM standard, which is used to write data to a SIM card chip, often supports only Latin and limits the number of characters (usually up to 14-20 characters), if you write contacts in Cyrillic or use long composite names, they can turn into unreadable characters when transferred or cut out beyond recognition.

It's also worth checking if there are multiple numbers on a single contact. On a SIM card, one entry is one phone number. If a Mom contact has three different numbers (mobile, home, work), the system will prompt you to choose which number to copy, or create three separate entries with the same name, which will create confusion in the future.

• 📱 Audit contacts: remove duplicates and combine disparate entries into single cards.
• 🔤 Check names: Make sure they are readable and don’t contain unnecessary special characters that may not show up correctly on another device.
• 📞 Select the primary number: For contacts with multiple phones, determine in advance which number is a priority for saving on the phone. SIM.

⚠️ Note: Before any manipulation of contacts is strongly recommended to make a backup copy to your Google account or export to the file.vcf. This will allow you to restore the data in its original form, if the copying process goes through with errors.

Standard method of copying through the Contacts application

The easiest and fastest way to migrate data is to use the built-in Contacts app, which is pre-installed on all Xiaomi smartphones. The interface may vary slightly depending on the version of MIUI, but the logic of actions remains the same for the entire brand ecosystem.

To start, open the Contacts app and find the menu button. In newer versions of the shell, these are often three horizontal or vertical dots located at the top right or bottom of the screen. In the menu, select “Import and export contacts” or “Settings”, and then “Copy contacts”.

The system will tell you to choose a source of data. Since we want to save numbers on the SIM card, we choose the source "Phone" or "Device" and then a list of available SIM cards (if there are two), and you will need to specify the target SIM. The process can take from a few seconds to a couple of minutes depending on the number of records.

When the operation is complete, the system will give a notification of successful copying, but do not immediately close the application. It is recommended to selectively check several records, opening them to make sure that the numbers are saved correctly and the names do not turn into a set of question marks.

Use of Mi Cloud and Synchronization

Xiaomi device owners have a unique opportunity to use the Mi Cloud cloud service to manage contacts. While the direct copy from Mi Cloud to SIM function may not be explicitly available, using the cloud as an intermediate buffer makes it convenient to filter and prepare data before writing to a physical medium.

Sync with your Mi Account allows you to see all your contacts on any device you sign in to, which is especially useful if you lost access to your main phone but want to prepare the base for a new SIM card, you can go to the web version of the cloud, edit the list there, delete the extra, and then synchicize the cleaned list back to your phone and then rewrite it to SIM from there.

In addition, using the cloud allows you to bypass the limit on the number of contacts that a SIM card has, you can store thousands of numbers in the cloud, and to the SIM card rewrite only the most important “favorite” list of 100-200 numbers that you may need in an emergency when the smartphone is discharged or lost.

Alternative ways through Google Contacts

Google’s ecosystem offers another layer of robust protection and data management: Google’s Contacts app often replaces the standard Xiaomi app on global firmware versions, and has more advanced tools for sorting and fixing duplicates, which is critical before writing to a limited media.

To use this method, open the Contacts app (the colored man icon), go to the settings and select Export. Here you can save contacts as a.vcf file, but we are interested in the copy option. Select Storage Management» -> «Copy your contacts. Please provide your Google account as your source and your recipient as yours. SIM-map.

The advantage of Google Contacts is that it can intelligently merge duplicates, and it can then combine records with the same names or numbers, which will significantly clear the phone book before transferring, especially for users who have changed phones and imported data from different sources.

• 🔄 Open the Google Contacts app on your Xiaomi device.
• ⚙️ Go to the control menu and select the fix and control function.
• 💾 Use the “Copy Contacts” option to transfer from Google to SIM.

Solving problems and errors when copying

Xiaomi users may encounter an error message, such as “Can’t copy contacts” or “Memory” SIM-These problems are easily solved if you understand their nature, most often the reason is overflowing memory of the SIM card or incompatibility of the data format.

If the system reports a space shortage, you need to free up space. SIM-You should also consider that some carriers reserve some of the SIM card memory for their service numbers, so the actual number of available slots may be less than the stated number.

Another common problem is encoding, where you can copy names in Cyrillic on some old SIM cards or roaming, and you can have reading errors, in which case the system can suggest transliterating names (writing Russian words in Latin letters) or copying only the number, leaving the name field blank.

⚠️ Note: If you have a format failure error when copying, try copying contacts in small groups. 10-20 This will help identify the particular record that's causing the crash and eliminate it or manually correct it.

Features of working with two SIM-cards

Xiaomi smartphones are famous for their support for two SIM cards, which is the standard for the market. When copying contacts, the system will ask you which card (SIM 1 or SIM 2) you want to save data to. It is important not to confuse slots, especially if the cards are used for different purposes (for example, one for work, the other for personal calls).

It's worth noting that you can't copy both cards at the same time, because you do it sequentially, so you pick the first SIM card, wait for it to be completed, then you repeat the procedure for the second card, and it's important to make sure that contacts don't duplicate if you accidentally pick the wrong source card.

In some cases, when the phone inserts SIM cards of different operators or different form factors (for example, through an adapter), the phone may not correctly determine the memory capacity of one of them. If copying to the second card is constantly interrupted, try to remove the first SIM card and repeat the operation, leaving only the target one.

💡

Advice: Before copying for the second SIM-Make a complete reset of the phone book on it (remove all old contacts) to avoid confusion and ensure new entries are accommodated.

FAQ: Frequently Asked Questions

💡

Copying on SIM is a method of saving numbers, but always use Google or Mi Cloud for a full backup.